Edward Bernays

Austrian-American publicist and propaganda theorist who invented the modern public relations industry — applying Freudian psychology to mass persuasion.

Propaganda (1928): a frank account of how a small elite manages public opinion through the engineering of consent. Crystallizing Public Opinion: the first public relations textbook. Engineered consent for the United Fruit Company's Guatemala overthrow (1954). Made women smoke cigarettes by linking them to feminist liberation (Torches of Freedom, 1929). Nephew of Sigmund Freud.